


Distractions

by Stariceling



Category: UC
Genre: Bullying, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-14
Updated: 2005-12-24
Packaged: 2017-12-05 12:29:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stariceling/pseuds/Stariceling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Naim and Nicodemus in their downtime.<br/>Collection of oneshots which belong in the same continuum, including: Frivolous Valentine, Icepack, etc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Frivolous Valentine

**Author's Note:**

> These characters belong to Betsy-sama and Jena-chan. *bows* As does UC. I’m simply. . . giving them exercise. A one-shot written for Valentine's day that somehow grew into an ongoing thing.

So he had chocolates. What now? Naim wasn't interested in any holiday that gave Jess an excuse to be clingy around him. This was a frivolous holiday at best.

Even taking precautions to avoid Jess outside of class, he had ended up with a heart-shaped box. At least it was better than last year. He got chocolates out of it, if nothing else. What did she expect him to do with them, anyway? 

Okay, assuming the mind of a normal person, just to eat them. There had to be a catch somewhere.

It was the same basic candy heart that could be found in just about any store this time of year. (The frilly ribbons were, thankfully, just a part of the design painted on the box.) Though something wasn't quite right. Naim knew that these were usually sold wrapped in plastic, and the absence made him suspect that Jess had tampered with something inside.

For now Naim just wanted to get away. Nothing had happened today. No demon-possessed classmates out for his blood. That was almost worse than when things really did go out of control. At least then he wasn't spending the whole day expecting a blow that never came. Maybe if he could get away from the school he would be able to think. He would think of something that he had just overlooked before.

Though, at least he didn't have extra problems physically trying to follow him home. He caught a glimpse of Nicodemus in his rearview mirror. He looked the way Naim had been feeling all day, expecting to be attacked any minute, though in this case it was plain exactly what was making him expect it.

Naim didn't waste time thinking about what he was doing. He slowed, pulled up to the sidewalk, and waited for Nicodemus to catch up to him. Stretching across the seat to open the passenger side door, he reminded himself that Nicodemus had been thrown into the same situation as him, and if they were supposed to handle this together, he could at least try to see that Nicodemus didn't snap under stress.

Nicodemus noticed him, and hesitated. Naim looked up from moving his things off of the seat to find Nicodemus trying to decide if Naim was really waiting for him, and losing what little space he had managed put between himself and his usual tormenters.

"Get in."

Nicodemus wasn't going to waste time after such a clear invitation. Naim waited only until Nicodemus closed the door to shove the box of chocolates onto his lap. He shifted back into drive and was moving before Nicodemus even had a chance to buckle his seatbelt.

Naim drove automatically, diverting some of his attention to Nicodemus. He'd had more than enough varieties of the 'what are you thinking?' expression directed at him from various people to recognize it anywhere. The question was why Nicodemus was giving him odd looks. It wasn’t the first time he’d ended up giving Nicodemus a ride, though usually Ikku was the one to suggest it and drag him along.

Nicodemus lifted the lid a little, cautiously, as if he expected to find a snake curled up in there instead of chocolates. The way he immediately blushed and clamped the box shut again confirmed Naim's suspicions that something had been tampered with. It probably wasn’t subtle tampering, either.

"Jess," was all the explanation that Naim bothered with.

"Oh." Nicodemus pushed the box as far away from himself as it could go while he didn't have anywhere to put it other than his lap. His blush was taking it's time fading.

Morbid curiosity. Naim wanted to know what was in there now.

On second thought, it would probably be safer to just throw the box away.

Naim didn’t realize until he was pulling into his own driveway that he had ended up abducting Nicodemus instead of driving him home, as he had intended to do. He had been doing too many things automatically lately. He was too preoccupied.

Well, they were both at his house. Might as well make the best of it. Naim reached for his backpack and climbed out of the car, leaving Nicodemus to follow him.

“Thanks,” Nicodemus said, though he looked more confused than grateful.

“Coming?”

“I can walk home from here.” Nicodemus grabbed his own backpack, and after a moment of hesitation he picked up Naim’s chocolates as well.

Naim stopped halfway to his house, simply waiting to see if Nicodemus would follow or go home. The longer he watched, the more tense Nicodemus seemed to become. Finally he gave up and followed Naim in.

The lights were all off. Naim was the first one home again.

Nicodemus dropped Naim’s chocolates on the kitchen table and stepped away from them, probably glad to be rid of them. Naim gave in to curiosity and opened the box instead of throwing it away, as he kept telling himself he meant to.

What he found was. . . Not exactly subtle, but not as bad as he had expected from Nicodemus’ reaction earlier. Naim used a corner of the lid to prod Jess’ extra gift out of the box. He could get rid of that later.

Naim looked from the chocolates to Nicodemus. "You can have them." He didn't think there would be anything wrong with them, but he didn't really want to find out otherwise firsthand.

"They were for you." Nicodemus wasn't buying it. Naim guessed he didn't really trust the sweets either.

Well, if there was something wrong, Naim would rather try one when someone else was around, just in case. It shouldn’t be that big of a deal. Just take one, eat it, see if there were any unpleasant side effects.

After a few minutes Nicodemus cautiously followed Naim’s example, and tried a chocolate himself.

They watched one another for a minute, but if there was anything wrong it wasn’t immediately evident. Nicodemus was the first one to decide that this was a good sign, reaching for another chocolate. Naim watched, still not trusting. His mistrust wasn’t helped when Nicodemus winced after biting into his second chocolate.

Nicodemus swallowed and tried to put the remaining half of the chocolate down. Naim quickly reached for it. In spite of his earlier thought of using Nicodemus to test the chocolates, Naim wasn’t exactly eager to see something happen to him because of them.

Nicodemus wasn’t exactly in trouble, though. “I don’t like that kind,” he said in explanation.

Naim didn’t bother to be annoyed by this. It was his own fault for reacting. He just confiscated the second half of Nicodemus’ chocolate and ate it himself, leaving chocolate smudges on Nicodemus’ fingers where the sweet had been.

Possibly deciding that the chocolates were really Naim’s and he didn’t want any more, Nicodemus sucked the chocolate off of one of his fingers instead of trying something new. Naim had no such hangups, since the chocolate seemed harmless now.

Nicodemus turned to look out the window, absentmindedly sucking chocolate off of his middle finger. When he took his hand away, he left a smudge of chocolate at the corner of his mouth. Naim looked at it for a moment before realizing that Nicodemus had no idea it was there, and thus wasn't going to do anything about it.

Naim licked his thumb, cupped his hand under Nicodemus' chin to steer his face closer, and wiped away the smudge of chocolate.

Nicodemus froze. Staring, he brought one hand up to the spot Naim had just wiped clean, brushing Naim's retreating hand by accident.

It might be best if he just ignored the look Nicodemus was giving him. Naim fixed his gaze on a point over Nicodemus’ left shoulder and carefully ignored those confused-hurt-hopeful eyes.

Nicodemus started fidgeting with his empty cup, staring at it instead. He probably had as good of a chance of starting conversation with it as he did of getting any explanation from Naim right now.

At about the moment that Naim was starting to be annoyed by the tension, Nicodemus snapped.

“I need to go home.”

There shouldn’t have been any need to follow Nicodemus out. He knew where the door was. He wasn’t going to lurk around instead of actually leaving. Naim just ended up leaning against the wall, watching Nicodemus. Nicodemus was hesitating again. If Naim didn't know better he almost would have thought Nicodemus didn’t want to leave.

Without any warning Nicodemus jerked away from the door, grabbed hold of Naim’s shoulders with both hands, and kissed him.

Naim froze. He couldn't have responded to what Nicodemus was doing even if he had wanted to. He was numb for a minute, just feeling the movement of Nicodemus' mouth on his. Nicodemus clenched his hands hard on Naim's shoulders for a second, then pulled himself away, looking disappointed.

Naim almost wished he could ask exactly what had made Nicodemus think he had the right to do that, especially when he had put effort into avoiding such things. The problem was he already knew. He had gotten careless. He really had managed to drop all the wrong signs. Now how was he supposed to set Nicodemus straight?

Nicodemus was blushing again, trying to say something that might have been an excuse if he could force out more than a few sounds at a time. It was obvious he would escape the minute he thought he could.

Knowing he could just watch, and in a moment Nicodemus would manage to say something and bolt, Naim took a step forward, and cut off Nicodemus himself.

Maybe it would have been just as effective to put his hand over Nicodemus’ mouth, but then he wouldn’t have gotten to see Nicodemus’ eyes go wide, or have gotten that muffled squeak of surprise. He wasn’t about to add that if he hadn’t initiated it, he wouldn’t have gotten to kiss Nicodemus again.

The shock didn’t last nearly as long as Naim expected it too. As soon as he tried to move away, Nicodemus followed. Even though he saw what was coming, he still felt a jolt when Nicodemus tried kissing him.

Naim wasn't sure what to do with himself. He tried to follow what Nicodemus was doing to him. If he could just duplicate the light touches of Nicodemus' lips that were currently making him lose all good sense, that should be more than enough for anyone.

Soon enough Naim found that Nicodemus had wrapped his arms firmly around him. He had both hands clenched on the back of Naim’s shirt, and Naim found himself mimicking Nicodemus, with one arm wrapped around Nicodemus’ shoulders and the other around his waist.

Nicodemus was breathing hard through his nose. Dimly, Naim was aware that this was something he should do. He really needed to find a way to breathe, because he was beginning to feel lightheaded.

At least when Naim stumbled and knocked both of them into the door he got a chance to breathe. He broke his mouth away from the kiss and rested his forehead on Nicodemus’ shoulder, seizing the chance to regain his breath.

Naim braced his hands on either side of Nicodemus as he realized he was leaning on him. Nicodemus was slowly releasing him at the same time, letting his arms drop away from Naim.

If this situation was starting to feel awkward to Naim, who was still at least trying to be determined that he didn’t care, it had to be getting out of hand.

Naim managed to calm his breathing, pushed himself upright, and reached around Nicodemus to open the door. Pulling the door open was a signal that Nicodemus would have to have been dense to miss.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Nicodemus managed to say. It he hadn’t been blushing, he would have looked calm about it. As it was, the fact that he was obviously watching Naim even when he tried to walk away didn’t help.

Naim wasn’t about to say anything. That would only stretch out a situation that had suddenly become uncomfortable.

Closing the door as soon as Nicodemus turned onto the sidewalk, Naim tried to sort out what he had just done. There was a faint tingling up and down his spine, and around his lips. He couldn’t call that nothing. At the least it would be a diversion.

That made sense. A diversion, so his mind would be fresh when he had to turn it to other things. In that case it worked perfectly. He could start over and look at everything from a new point, instead of driving his thoughts in the same circles.

Automatically, Naim went through the motions of cleaning up. He was aware of putting the chocolates away instead of throwing them out, as he had originally intended. He carefully sealed off the speculation that bubbled up, that Nicodemus might be back tomorrow. No time to let his distraction have a mind of it’s own.

Naim didn’t have time to muse over a frivolous holiday any longer. Things were quickly getting out of hand. He had other things to think about.


	2. Icepack (part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This comes about a week or so after the ‘Frivolous Holiday’ (Valentines day). Expect more to come into this series eventually. Also note that while this is titled Icepack one, Icepack two and three do not happen until much later. IDK when I'll post them.

Naim hadn’t intended to end up waiting for Nicodemus after school. He just found himself thinking up excuses to stick around for an extra few minutes, watching for him the whole time. He didn’t even have to acknowledge that he was waiting specifically for Nicodemus until he saw him. He leaned over and opened the passenger side door. This was as good as anything he could have been waiting for.

“Nicodemus,” Naim had to call to bring Nicodemus’ attention off of the ground and over to himself.

Nicodemus glanced away a little too quickly. “I’m fine. I’m walking home.”

“You’re limping.” Naim wouldn’t have noticed it if not for Nicodemus insisting that he was fine. Either Nicodemus was on the defensive because he had already been attacked at least once today, or he was remembering how he had embarrassed himself last time. Naim didn’t care.

Nicodemus did pause long enough to glance at Naim, who left the door open for him. If Nicodemus was going to be stubborn about it, he wasn’t going to waste his time commanding him to get in.

After several seconds of appraising the offer, Nicodemus climbed in, watching Naim out of the corner of his eye as if he expected to be bitten at any moment.

Naim took his foot off of the brake. No point in sticking around any longer, now that he had Nicodemus. He was sure there weren’t any demons lurking about after school today that he would be expected to deal with. All he wanted was an hour when he didn’t have to worry about demons or schoolwork, and he had already discovered that Nicodemus made a useful distraction.

It did occur to him that he might be giving Nicodemus something else to worry about, but he was fairly sure he could compensate for that.

“What happened?” Naim found himself asking carelessly as he pulled out.

“Tripped,” was all Nicodemus was willing to tell him.

Naim knew better than to believe such a lame explanation. “Over whose foot?”

“Ankle,” Nicodemus corrected, instead of actually answering Naim. He stared out his window, and to Naim’s annoyance he seemed to be getting more tense the further they drove.

“You don’t even know where I live, do you.”

“I was going to take you home and ask if I could keep you.”

Interesting. The oddest things made Nicodemus blush sometimes. Naim found himself relaxing as well.

“I have to get home.”

Well then he shouldn’t have gotten in, Naim thought privately. Unless he needed a ride. That was fine. “Give me directions, then.”

“No.”

Strange. Then again, it was Wednesday. Even Naim had noticed Nicodemus’ pattern of disappearing on Wednesday afternoons. Even Ikku didn’t know where he went to, and if he had managed to keep whatever it was he was doing secret from Ikku, Naim could see that he wouldn’t want to give up his secret so easily.

It still didn’t answer why he had gotten in if he had somewhere to go. He might have some free time, Naim decided.

Naim pulled into his driveway at about the same time the blush completely faded from Nicodemus’ face. He thought it was safe to assume Nicodemus would play along and come with him. He had so far without Naim having to talk him into it.

Halfway to his front door, Naim realized that Nicodemus wasn’t following him. He hadn’t even gotten out of the car. Such an inconvenience. Naim had to go back and open the passenger side door for him.

“Coming?”

“No.”

Naim waited a moment, but Nicodemus didn’t make any move to get out, and he didn’t demand to be taken home instead. What was Naim supposed to do with him?

Well, he might sit there all day if Naim didn’t do something first. He looked half paralyzed. “If you can’t walk twenty feet, it’s a good thing you’re not trying to walk home,” he pointed out, reaching over Nicodemus to unbuckle his seatbelt. “Do you need me to carry you?”

That got Nicodemus’ face to go a very interesting shade of red. “I’m fine,” he insisted, pushing himself out of his seat and colliding with Naim’s arm, which was still stretched over him.

Naim was a little surprised that he was willing to follow him inside after that, though he was still trying not to look like he was limping. Stubborn as ever.

Still, stubborn could be helpful, especially when Naim couldn’t be sure if he had an ice pack or not.

Nicodemus sat down in the kitchen without Naim having to ask, while Naim sorted through the freezer, trying to remember the last time he had even needed the ice pack.

“What did you do?” Naim didn’t take his head out of the freezer to ask, so he was fairly sure Nicodemus couldn’t hear him.

“Twisted my knee.”

“Hm.” Naim glanced over. Why was Nicodemus brooding again? He kept sneaking peeks that Naim could practically feel, though he didn’t acknowledge them. Where was the damn ice pack? Naim was starting to think he was wasting his time looking for it.

“It’s under those ice-cream things,” Nicodemus pointed out.

It was. Naim was sure he had already looked there, but he shrugged it off and tossed the ice pack to Nicodemus.

Nicodemus pressed it to his knee, over his trench coat. Naim seriously doubted that he could feel it at all through his coat.

Naim pulled up a chair beside Nicodemus, sat down, and started unbuttoning the front of Nicodemus’ coat. It was fine until his hands were high enough to brush Nicodemus’ stomach, prompting a noise of pain from him.

Naim quickly finished with the coat, then wrapped the ice pack around Nicodemus’ knee while he waited for him to relax a little. He was a little intrigued that Nicodemus wasn’t protesting or trying to leave at this point.

Once Nicodemus had settled down, Naim pulled up his shirt to see what had made him wince before. There were two large bruises when he had accidentally brushed his hands, one on Nicodemus’ stomach and one on his side. Both of them were already blooming a painful blue-black. Naim was sure he knew just how Nicodemus had acquired those. He should have guessed they, the same nameless ‘they’ who had tripped him in the first place, would kick Nicodemus while he was down.

“What are you doing!?” Nicodemus demanded, yanking his shirt out of Naim’s grip.

“Thinking you need another ice pack.”

Nicodemus looked down at Naim’s hand, which was still holding the ice pack to his knee. Naim expected to feel Nicodemus smack his hand away, but he didn’t.

“Not that.” Nicodemus sat forward a little, his face so close to Naim’s now that Naim suddenly remembered how he had accidentally strung Nicodemus along last time. He recognized that look, the one that said Nicodemus didn’t know what expression he wanted to make. He tilted his chin up slightly, as if saying that he would like to kiss Naim, but he really didn’t want to make the first move this time. He probably wasn’t even aware that he was doing it.

Naim wouldn’t have minded just kissing him, but last time had been so awkward. Naim wasn’t sure it was worth it. “Didn’t you have somewhere to be now?”

That killed the mood very effectively. “Yeah. Pretty soon.”

“Numb yet?” Naim clenched his hand around Nicodemus’ knee. His hand was freezing already. He wished Nicodemus had tried to remove it.

“Give it a minute.”

Naim studied Nicodemus, so disappointed and oddly. . . appealing. He was good to have around, at least in controlled doses. Even in this stubborn mood he made a good distraction. Naim thought he could get used to this.

With that in mind, he knew he shouldn’t brush Nicodemus off entirely. “Do this again when you’re not busy?”

Nicodemus nodded, as Naim knew he would. “Sure.”


End file.
